Berlin, July 9-10, 2015

Politics, as the ordering of public space, also implies the ordering of acoustic space. The acoustic occupation of public space and the regulation of its acoustic form are not only themselves forms of political practice (i.e. hegemony or protest); they also transport auditory knowledge about social and political power relationships. At the same time, the intentional use of acoustic strategies in political struggles demands political knowledge about the mechanisms of auditory perception. This workshop  discussed this interrelationship with special emphasis on the examples of acoustic power struggles in the early modern city, acoustic mobilization in imperial Berlin, and the hegemonic auditory knowledge that was collected in German war prisons of the Second World War regarding prisoners from foreign cultures.

On Thursday, 9th July, 6 pm, Monika Dommann (Zürich) gave a public lecture on "Record, Rewind, Rewrite? Eine akustische Geschichtsschreibung der Presidential Tapes" as a keynote for the meeting at the Seminarzentrum Silberlaube Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26, 14195 Berlin – Raum L 116.

On Thursday, 9th July and Friday 10th July, an internal workshop was held with Carolyn Birdsall (Amsterdam), Monika Dommann (Zürich), Marian Füssel (Göttingen) and Theo Jung (Freiburg) as guests.

Organizers: Britta Lange, Jan-Friedrich Missfelder, Daniel Morat

Images of the fourth workshop can be found here.